Violet. 1980
TERUKO YOKOI. (b. 1924 Tsushima, Japan. d. 2020 Bern, Switzerland)
Violet. 1980
acrylic on canvas
45 3/4 x 32 3/4 in. / 116.4 x 83.4 cm
signed and dated in Japanese, lower left
Drawn from her impressions of the natural world, she would describe her paintings as “poems written in colors”. Yokoi enjoyed a pastoral childhood, wandering the hills outside of Nagoya with her father on what he termed “haiku hiroi”. Settling in Bern in 1962, the landscape reminded her of the childhood landscape lost after World War II. Violet represents the lyrical merging of abstract expressionist experiences with Japanese aesthetics.
